The present invention relates to automatic fruit processing machinery, and more particularly to such machinery as is adapted for use in processing fresh pineapples prior to canning.
A widely used apparatus for processing fresh pineapples is known as the Ginaca machine. In this apparatus, the pineapples are conveyed through a centering head into a revolving cylindrical sizing knife which cuts away the shell or skin leaving a solid cylinder of fruit. The cylinder of fruit then enters a barrel in a sequentially indexed revolving turret and is subjected to various processing operations therein, including removal of the top and butt ends of the fruit and coring of the center portion. The fruit is then discharged from the barrel, typically with some shell or skin eyes and other blemishes remaining near both ends of the cylinder because of the tapered shape of a pineapple. At present, this remaining skin, eyes and other surface imperfections are trimmed manually with a knife. This manual operation frequently results in damage to the pineapple, thereby demanding a downgrading of the fruit to a less profitable grade, and loss of more fruit than need be removed to trim away the remaining shell and blemishes. Further, to reduce trimming labor, it is frequently a standard practice to set the Ginaca machine to cut more meat from the top and butt of the pineapple than is actually necessary, so that extensive trimming of the tapered portions is not required and therefore can be handled by only a few trimmers. Present processing methods, therefore, result in considerable waste or high labor costs and sometimes both.
Various efforts have been made to reduce the waste resulting from conventional processing methods. For example, in Farmer, U.S. Pat. No. 3,036,920, a method is disclosed for dual diameter shell removal without trimming. By this method, the shell was removed to create a fruit cylinder having a specified diameter, and if any shell and blemishes remained at either end of the fruit cylinder, that end was resized to a smaller diameter. This method has been shown not to reduce labor requirements or to improve yield. Also, efforts have recently been made to develop a contour peeler, but such efforts have thus far been unsuccessful. By this method, a spindle is inserted through the core of the pineapple to allow a peeler to peel the shell by following the contour of the fruit. The difficulty with this concept is that soft fruit, such as comprises much of the riper pineapples, tends to break apart and become damaged from the pressure exerted on the fruit by the spindle and the peeler.